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PC Dead in the Water

gerhard7

Posted 12 July 2006 - 03:57 PM

gerhard7

Member

Member

19 posts

I was merrily working on my desktop PC today, when suddenly the screen went blank (no power failure) and I have not been able to reboot it since.
Although the power lights still come on, I still get nothing but "no signal" on the monitor.

Symptoms:
CD trays won't open.
No sound of system booting when power is disconnected and switched back on again.
No bios screen on startup (well, no startup)
No strange sound from HD or any error / warning message (before or after)
No responce on either keyboard or mouse
Fans are working and there is no smell of any burning on MB
Black monitor screen with error message "no signal or cable diconnected"
Have checked all cables and connections.
When I power up all the lights (keyboard, mouse, cd bays, usb drive, power mains) come on and flash only once.
All exept for the floppy drive.
The only two that stay on is the 2 mains power (one green one red) and DVD drive lights. Nothing on the keyboard ie caps lock.

Pc runs on XP

I've had a similar problem a few weeks before when there was a power fade, but then it was ok as soon as the power came back to full strength.

Any ideas on where to start looking for this problem, or suggestions on ruling things out.
Thanks

Edited by gerhard7, 13 July 2006 - 07:22 AM.

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digikiwi

Posted 12 July 2006 - 08:36 PM

digikiwi

Member

Member

259 posts

It could be your RAM has fried. Can you try your RAM in another compatible computer or try someone elses compatible RAM in yours? By compatible I mean you need to make sure it is the same kind of RAM. You can check this by going to www.crucial.com on the working computer and looking at the motherboard on the dead one to find what model it is (write down the numbers / codes printed on it . usually the big print one) and finding out what RAM it uses on the same site.

gerhard7

Posted 13 July 2006 - 11:26 AM

WindyPants

Posted 14 July 2006 - 07:14 AM

These are always tough nuts to crack. The easy part is that it is either your Power Supply or MOBO. The bad part is that it is expensive to play "swap a part."

On the surface it sounds like your MOBO (or a major MOBO component) has failed. You are getting to the BIOS POST pattern, but no further. Plus no error codes or beeps. These are tricky to diagnose.

I would start by removing all of the plug/slot devices from you MOBO. Video, sound if present, memory and any other PCI cards. Boot it, and you should hear POST pattern error beeps.

Of course, it could still be the Power Supply. So after test #1 above, I would try a different PS. You could go old school and place a voltmeter on the pins from the PS to your MOBO, but with out a schematic it would be tough to get any useful results.